Are you confused? Read this blog and be confused no longer.
April 21 2011
3 Comments

It seems there has been confusion in the Twin Cities area recently about who Dogwood Coffee Company is. This timeline exists to clear up some confusion, as well as answer some frequently asked questions.

TIMELINE OF DOGWOOD and/or BULL RUN EVENTS

NOVEMBER 26th, 2009
Rustica Bakery opens at their new location in Calhoun VILLAGE shopping center. Bull Run Coffee Bar is inside. Coffee operations are managed by Bull Run Roasting Co.

Over the next year, it becomes apparent that the wholesale business of Bull Run Roasting Co. and the “retail” portion of the company are vastly different. Different coffees, different roasting protocols, different emphases in general.

OCTOBER 1st, 2010
Greg Hoyt SELLS the WHOLESALE portion of Bull Run Roasting Company. The “retail” portion of Bull Run (the operations at Rustica, the coffees being sold direct to consumers, the baristas working at Rustica) becomes Dogwood. Dogwood is started and owned by Greg Hoyt and Dan Anderson. The coffee bar inside Rustica is the same coffee and the same baristas since 2009, but is now a different company. Some wholesale customers buying “retail” coffees continue with Dogwood (see our list of awesome wholesale customers here). Bull Run Roasting Company continues as a wholesale roaster under new ownership.

NOVEMBER 1st 2010
Dogwood Coffee Bar opens in Calhoun Square. Rustica serves Dogwood Coffee, and the baristas and the coffee operations from Rustica move to the Dogwood Coffee Bar at Calhoun Square. Rustica’s team of baristas continue the single-cup coffee and espresso awesomeness which began a year earlier.

FIRST WEEK OF APRIL, 2011
Bull Run Coffee Bar opens on Lyndale. This is different from Dogwood Coffee Co. The baristas who started at Rustica/Bull Run Coffee Bar in 2009 (now with Dogwood), and Greg Hoyt are separate from Bull Run.

Q: Do they do anything together?
A: As with other like-minded roasters in the Twin Cities, we are friends, but that is the extent of it.

Q: Does Bull Run supply Dogwood with their coffee?
A: No, Dogwood Coffee Company is a roasting company; we source and roast our own coffees.

Q: Why is there so much confusion?
A: “Dogwood” has been mostly the same group of people from the very beginning; in the Bull Run old days. We feel pretty lucky to have the same core group of people for so long, and it’s really the motivation of those people that makes Dogwood exist. The vision of Dogwood became clear and the challenge of operating a legacy wholesale coffee business alongside a progressive retail coffee business presented a ‘fork in the road’, so it worked out to start over as Dogwood Coffee Company.

Q: Why do Dogwood and Bull Run have the same wholesale address?
A: Dogwood has been sub-leasing space at the Bull Run warehouse (we are all camping out in the tiny office in the front) and sharing time on the roaster. Next month, Dogwood will be moving to its own space in Northeast Minneapolis, with our own roaster and all our own space!

Comments

Sitflotolycle on August 19 2011 at 03:46AM

Por que no:)

Wes on May 07 2011 at 11:35PM

This reminds me of that old Abbott and Costello skit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M

john denver. on May 03 2011 at 11:01AM

I’m wondering…would this mean that Nordeast might be getting a Dogwood cafe…because I think that would be swell. We need something like this on our side of the river!